Someone on this list has frequently quoted a comment from Steve Jobs
very appropriate to this sneer. Even more appropriate to the more
general issue is the repeated comment from kde developers that further
development of kde 3 had become too difficult due to a mass of legacy
code and antique programming methodology that made development
unmanageable.

Apparently not. Once you are in a monopoly position in the Linux world
(one of only two major desktop options, and hitherto the most
attractive), many people might argue that you have a moral responsibility
to your users -- at a minimum, to inquire about their preferences..
Apparently you do not. Was the switch to a different programming
technology forced upon you? Or did it seem like great fun to give it a
whirl, and users be damned.

In fact, many of us users prefer kde4 now that it's settling down and
we're getting used to it. So we can properly call you an ignorant
naysayer and tell you to be damned?

Nobody has to excuse himself for spending his free time to create
something you chose to use.

I have read those words from you many times, and I have expressed my
opinion about them before, and in my paragraph just above. I do not
believe that my opinion is unusual in the user community, but of course,
you are entitled to your own opinion too. Free choice, you know.
Personally, I think your stance is arrogant.

And I think yours is arrogant. Neither having contributed to the
project, nor even taken the trouble (by your own admission!) to read the
long string of discussions on this matter, you assume the prerogative to
sneer at others' hard work to modernize and improve it, just because
it's different and you've not bothered to look seriously at the
question, or even to try to understand their concerns!

Further the sysinfo:/ where you could get the right-click to eject was
not part of KDE3 but an openSUSE patch. Yet if I consider the attitude
in your text, explanations are not what you are looking for in the
first place.

openSuSE can goof too. They don't make a habit of it.

openSuSE didn't goof, except maybe in making kde4 the default install
before it was really ready. Time will tell whether kde has goofed, but
it all seems to be coming down on their side, and I for one am glad of it.

I was writing code before modern windowing was more than a glimmer in
the back of some Xerox scientists' minds; I've followed it since it
became public knowledge due to Steve Jobs's pilfering the concepts for
his ill-fated Lisa after a visit to their research facility.

I heartily approve of every advance in windowing since then, and enjoy
its tremendous advantages in ease of use over the antique methods I
started out with.